The Railspeeders Forum

It has been awhile since I have posted an update. We have been out working one or two days a week all summer and have made a lot of progress.

We decided to pre-position the gage rods out on the West End. There is a stack of ties that has been there forever so we are piling them there, oiling the threads and covering them up with a tarp to minimize rust.



The weed killer has worked a miracle. Everything is now dead from about 4' on down and about 12-14' wide.



We still have a lot of track where the saplings and scrub need to be cut back. As we roll along we are constantly assaulted by ranches whipping into the car so we just take it slow and easy.



There is one spot where storm runoff covered the track with a sand and clay mix for about 300 yards. Every time we head out we spend about 15 minutes or so digging there. We have no way to get any heavy equipment there so we will just keep picking at it.



We are working in an area East of the Chinese Wall where the track is now exposed to bright sunlight and we are getting a lot of sun kinks. At first we thought we could get by with putting one gage rod in near every track joint but now we are having to add one or two more between the joints.



We have found that there are almost enough gaps between the old ties that we can easily slip in gage rods.





There are a lot of places where the original builders used rubble fill as ballast and this is a real pain. We have to pry out the chunks of stone with crow bars to insert a gage rod.



Here is an interesting photo of what is left of one of the old ties. It sort of crystallized into little pieces. We see this a lot. These are great because we can scoop out the left overs and slid a gage rod in easily.



This is sort of a funny photo. When I get home I pull into our lower driveway, back the trailer onto the grass, and then pull forward heading out of the driveway to turn around. Once I am turned it is easy to back the trailer to a spot where I keep it between trips. Unfortunately, while I was away it had rained. The roads and driveway were dry but the grass which is on a slight slope was wet. 500+ horse power wouldn't pull the trailer up the slight grade on slippery grass. So I waited until the next morning when it was dry and drove out easily.



That's all for now...

Come visit and ride with us anytime.

It is 2009 and the start of a new year working out on the West End!

It has been about two months since we were out there and there were so many trees down that we wore out two chain saw chains clearing the track a week ago.



Yesterday three of us headed out to start working on the sink hole along the Chinese Wall. Here is a 5 or more year old photo of it.



Our plan was to install some re-lay ties with a 4"x4" vertical prop under the north rail (the rail on the side away from the wall) using pre-cast concrete bases for the 4"x4"s. A few months ago we cleaned out the sink hole and got rid of all of the wood and leaves and stuff so it would be clean and easy to work in. The first thing we found is that we were working in some sort of sandy dirt fill, not stone as we expected. The result of this was that as we jacked up our jack it sunk into the ground and once we installed the vertical posts, they sunk into the ground too. As I type a large band of heavy storms is passing through the area so I expect that when we go back next weekend we will find that our two props have sunk.

The whole purpose of this adventure is to try our best to level the track. The North rail is 4" to 5" lower than the South rail and you get a "creepy feeling" when you cross it and the car leans over.

We are going to have to add more props to maintain a level track.

This past winter I hauled one of the Museum's 4 wheel flat cars home, cleaned it up, fixed all of the broken parts, painted it, and added some removable 8" high sides to it.



We are going to use this car to start filling in the sink hole. There is a section of track we call the "Roller Coaster" because it is long and straight but undulates up and down. There is an inexhaustible supply of stone along it that we can pick up and toss into the flat car and then dump into the hole. Here is a photo of my MT-14 on the "Roller Coaster" and you can see the chunks of stone.



Of course we will also be adding larger stones when we can load them and dirt and gravel too. We want the fill to be solid so that it will not continue to sink into the larger stones that make up the original fill.

Here are two photos of the sink hole with the first two props installed yesterday.





We put in a hard day's work yesterday and it is only the first day of a major project but we felt that we had accomplished something at the end of the day.